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Sabatini was a proponent of basing historical fiction as closely as possible on history. Although Blood is a fictional character, much of the historical background of the novel is based on fact.[1] The Monmouth rebels were sold into slavery as described in the book; and the shifting political alliances of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 are used in the novel as a plot device to allow Blood's return to respectability.

Sabatini based the first part of the story of Blood on Henry Pitman, a surgeon who tended the wounded Monmouth rebels and was sentenced to death by Jeffries, but his sentence was commuted to transportation to Barbados where he escaped and was captured by pirates.[1] Unlike the fictional Blood, Pitman did not join them, and eventually made his way back to England where he wrote a popular account of his adventures.[2] For Blood's life as a buccaneer, Sabatini used several models, including Henry Morgan and the work of Alexandre Exquemelin, for historical details.[1]

Sabatini first introduced the character Captain Blood in a series of eight short stories in Premier Magazine as Tales of the Brethren of the Main, published from December 1920 to March 1921, and reprinted in Adventure Magazine from January to May 1921, with a novella "Captain Blood's Dilemma", published in Premier Magazine in April 1921 (and Adventure Magazine in October 1921).[a] The Odyssey-like story arc of these tales was then woven by Sabatini into a continuous narrative in novel form, published as Captain Blood: His Odyssey in 1922.[21]

The protagonist is the sharp-witted Dr. Peter Blood, a fictional Irish physician who had had a wide-ranging career as a soldier and sailor (including a commission as a captain under the Dutch admiral De Ruyter) before settling down to practice medicine in the town of Bridgwater in Somerset.

The book opens with him attending to his geraniums while the town prepares to fight for the Duke of Monmouth. He wants no part in the rebellion, but while attending to some of the rebels wounded at the Battle of Sedgemoor, Peter is arrested. During the Bloody Assizes, he is convicted by the infamous Judge Jeffreys of treason on the grounds that "if any person be in actual rebellion against the King, and another person—who really and actually was not in rebellion—does knowingly receive, harbour, comfort, or succour him, such a person is as much a traitor as he who indeed bore arms."

The sentence for treason is death by hanging, but King James II, for purely financial reasons, has the sentence for Blood and other convicted rebels commuted to transportation to the Caribbean, where they are to be sold into slavery. Upon arrival on the island of Barbados, Blood is bought by Colonel Bishop, initially for work in the Colonel's sugar plantations but later hired out by Bishop when Blood's skills as a physician prove superior to those of the local doctors.

When a Spanish force attacks and raids the town of Bridgetown, Blood escapes with a number of other convict-slaves (including former shipmaster Jeremy Pitt, the one-eyed giant Edward Wolverstone, former gentleman Nathaniel Hagthorpe, former Royal Navypetty officer Nicholas Dyke and former Royal Navy master gunner Ned Ogle), captures the Spaniards' ship and sails away to become one of the most successful pirates in the Caribbean, hated and feared by the Spanish.

After the Glorious Revolution, Blood is pardoned. As a reward for saving the colony of Jamaica from a French assault, he is appointed its governor.

Captain Blood was an enormously popular work, but instead of continuing the series with sequels, Sabatini wrote fifteen more short stories set during Captain Blood's pirate career. Two of the tales in Captain Blood Returns ("The War Indemnity" and "Blood Money") may be viewed as continuations of events that took place in the original novel, but all the stories are contained within the timeframe of Captain Blood.[b]

Eight of these new stories were published in 1931 as Captain Blood Returns (retitled The Chronicles of Captain Blood in the British publication) along with two of the Tales of the Brethren of the Main that had not been incorporated into Captain Blood. A second collection, The Fortunes of Captain Blood was published in 1936, consisting of six new stories, and one final story was included in Sabatini's collection of short stories Turbulent Tales, published in 1946.[21]

In the opening chapter of Arturo Pérez-Reverte's novel The Club Dumas (1993), two characters discuss their favourite novel by Sabatini; book dealer Lucas Corso declares his preference for Captain Blood.